By Will Vandervort.

SIX MILE — Clemson head basketball coach Brad Brownell enters the 2014-’15 basketball season with some familiar faces and some new ones too as the Tigers get set to open practice this Friday in Littlejohn Coliseum.

The familiar faces include assistant head coach Mike Winiecki, assistant coach Steve Smith and Director of Basketball Operations Lucas McKay. He also welcomes back eight lettermen from last season’s NIT Final Four participate, which includes center Landry Nnoko and point guard Rod Hall.

But the new faces open speculation on if Brownell’s program can improve on last year’s late season success and make back it to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in four years. To do that, the Tigers will have to replace All-ACC First Team Forward K.J. McDaniels, who is now playing for the Philadelphia 76ers, and former assistant coach Earl Grant, who became the head coach at the College of Charleston less than a month before practices begin.

“The continuity in our staff is a big bonus and I think you see that in our football staff as well,” Brownell said Wednesday as he hosted the media at The Cliffs at Keowee Springs as part of his annual media golf outing. “We have had some change throughout the course of my time here, which has made it a little bit challenging for me and has forced me to make good decisions and good hires.

“As much as anything, you forget that Earl was very involved in a bunch of our recruiting and now we lost a guy that was the point-man of some people and we had to go back through and solidify some things there. But more than that, he has had four years of a relationship with guys like Rod Hall. He has been very involved with Demarcus Harrison so there are relationships there that all of sudden as a player that guy is not here anymore and there is a little bit of a void.

“It does not matter who you bring in, and we brought in a great guy in Richie Riley, you can’t speed up the relationship process. It takes time for people to really trust each other and to care about each other. Richie will do a great job mending those fences and getting in there and building relationships with our guys but that is a big challenge.”

Besides Riley getting adjusted to his responsibilities and his players, Brownell must also find a replacement for McDaniels and his 17.1 points, 7.1 rebounds and his 2.8 blocks per game.

“It could be different guys in different games,” Brownell said.

This is the fourth straight year Brownell enters a new season having to replace his leading scorer. Nnoko is a candidate to be that guy, but replacing McDaniels isn’t that easy to do.

“We joked about it a year ago at this media session saying, ‘Okay next year you might not be able to say that’ and here we are saying it, again,” Brownell said. “That is a big piece – that go-to guy. Who is it going to be?

“Can it be a Demarcus Harrison? Will it be Rod Hall? Can it be Landry Nnoko? Off the top of my head I would think those are the three guys that would have the most opportunity to make plays like that. I think as the season goes on you will see each of them have different opportunities.”

And as the season goes on, you might see Clemson become a better basketball team, but what now there are too many questions to answer to say exactly when that might be.